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Short abstract:

This study uses event ethnography as an alternative to lab ethnographies to conduct field observations of three Canadian science conferences. The study finds that these spaces highlight some of the power dynamics which cause barriers to marginalized communities contributing to scientific discourses.

Long abstract:

There has been a long history of barriers and challenges related to the exploration of the natural sciences through a social lens. While these challenges are generally related to issues such as the resistance to seeing the sciences as something other than objective, the barriers are even greater when attempting to understand the ways in which power structures such as racism, whiteness, and epistemic oppression are embedded in the sciences. However, shifts in the social studies of sciences (STS) - including those which arose due to the pandemic - highlight alternative ways to understand science, as science can also be ‘performed’ outside of the lab. In order to understand issues such as racism, whiteness, and epistemic oppression in the natural and social sciences, this study used event ethnography to observe three disciplinary conferences in Canada, in the neurosciences, geosciences, and political science, respectively. This study finds several power structures that can particularly implicate marginalized communities of scholars’ abilities to contribute to scientific discourse in a space where science is ‘performed’. These barriers include the kinship between supervisors and their supervisees, varying access to spaces and places, and conferences associations’ commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI).